Pressure-driven fragmentation of clouds at high redshift

Abstract

The discovery of a hyper metal-poor star with total metallicity of $\le 10^{-5}$ Z$_\odot$, has motivated new investigations of how such objects can form from primordial gas polluted by a single supernova. In this paper we present a shock-cloud model which simulates a supernova remnant interacting with a cloud in a metal-free environment at redshift $z=10$. Pre-supernova conditions are considered, which include a multiphase neutral medium and H II region. A small dense clump ($n=100$ cm$^{-3}$), located 40 pc from a 40 M$_\odot$ metal-free star, embedded in a $n=10$ cm$^{-3}$ ambient cloud. The evolution of the supernova remnant (explosion energy $10^{52}$ erg) and its subsequent interaction with the dense clump is examined. This is the first study to include a comprehensive treatment of the non-equilibrium chemistry and associated radiative cooling that is occurring at all stages of the shock-cloud model. We have included a primordial chemistry network that covers the temperature range $10-10^9$ K, and is coupled to thermal models of atomic & molecular cooling. We find $\times10^{3}$ density enhancement of the clump (i.e maximum density $\sim 78000$ cm$^{-3}$) within this metal-free model. This is consistent with Galactic shock-cloud models considering solar metallicity gas with equilibrium cooling functions. Despite this strong compression, the cloud does not become gravitationally unstable. We find that the small cloud modelled here is destroyed for shock velocities $\gtrsim 50\,$km s$^{-1}$, and not significantly affected by shocks with velocity $\lesssim 30\,$km s$^{-1}$. Rather specific conditions are required to make such a cloud collapse.